A humbling time for Georgia Baptists

Photo: Joe Westbury, Christian Index

The photo is of our Georgia Baptist Convention building on which edifice I blogged last week because the GBC Executive Committee is exploring its sale.

It is magnificent. I hope the Christian Index doesn't mind my using their photo.

Let me share a personal story on building buildings - a micropastor building story.

In a recent church building program some mistakes were made. No one foresaw some things and we ended up with a few minor details that we wished we had done differently. I recall listening to someone repeatedly complaining about these, ad nauseum, to which I finally said, "Look. It cannot be undone. I'm not going to spend the next decade griping about it. I suggest you find a way to do this as well and we will both be happier."

We have this GBC building. Not a whole lot can be done about it. Maybe it can be sold, though I question the resolve of Georgia Baptists to go through with such a plan. Perhaps some of the 40 acres can be cut off and sold to pay down the debt. Maybe some of the building can be leased (with all the job cuts, surely we are significantly underutilizing the thing).

I'm not going to spend a lot of time griping about it. I cannot be undone.

But, wait a minute. I don't recall a lot of rancor back when it was being built. I don't recall any 'storm the Baptist Bastille' movements to downsize and scale back the building program.

Most all of us were on board. Maybe spending got out of hand with it. If so, odd that no one has said so in all these years since. I don't know.

I do know that a lot of real estate deals in 2006 got out of hand. I've worked in and been around the real estate business all my life (I had a real estate license as a teenager) and have a decent understanding of it.

Lots of people built or bought houses in 2006 that are worth about half what they were back then. There was this meltdown, remember? Attitudes were different prior to it. Grand visions and appreciating values were the rule.

Hindsight is a wonderful thing. No doubt things would be done differently today.

I see no profit in bearing ill will towards Dr. White and other GBC leaders who led the effort to build this building and spending the next score of years complaining about it. It's done. He and the Executive Committee have my prayers as they seek solutions.

This has to be a humbling time with staff, budgets, and ministries being cut. And now the showpiece building on the table. It is also, seems to me, a good time to look hard at all we do. Maybe we should make some major changes, changes other than just slicing jobs and budgets.

While there will be a time when the economy improves and the Cooperative Program picks up, I sense that normalcy for Georgia Baptists has changed permanently. That is good and I trust that we have people in place who will respond to the present challenges.

A good place to start would be complete openness and transparency. I think Georgia Baptists are owed that.
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As an addendum, while I allow anonymous comments, there are people who ought to speak to this issue and identify themselves when they do. 

Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!

In a little over one hundred words, Percy Bysshe Shelley captured the inevitability of the decline of empires and leaders. 

"Ozymandias." You should have paid attention in high school. View the poem below.

Should Baptists find room for these incisive words in all of our grand buildings, in our churches, institutions?

Couldn't hurt. 

The Georgia Baptist Convention has a showpiece headquarters building in a high-dollar suburb of Atlanta. I don’t know of any state convention that has one to compare. I think one could describe the GBC building as superior to the Richmond headquarters of our flagship institution, the International Mission Board. Tax assessors agree, the IMB's Monument Avenue property being assessed at about ten million less than the GBC property.

The GBC moved into their building in the heady days of 2006 just a couple of years prior to the meltdown of 2008. The building cost $43.5 million and $26 million is still owed on it. Debt service is $141,000 per month. Ouch.

Here is a headline Southern Baptists aren't used to seeing: Ga. Baptists to explore property sale

How often do Baptists even think about this sort of move?

Uh...never.

The GBC has cut the budget, pared the rolls of dozens of staff but they haven’t done anything about the building. I suppose mortgage holders expect to get their $141k check every month.

Not surprisingly, Baptists being a rather grumbling sort of people, the sparkling HQ building has been a magnet for gripes around the state.

[GBC Executive Director Robert] White said criticism of the building also led him to consider making the request of the Executive Committee, though it was not the driving factor. He said he knew the building had become a hindrance to some and did not want that to be a roadblock toward cooperation. 

He also said:

"We are not bankrupt and we are up to date on all our financial obligations," White emphasized to head off any speculation regarding the recommendation. Since the 2008 recession, the state convention has trimmed its budget by $11.8 million, or 22.56 percent. Staffing levels in the building, which peaked at 133 just three years ago, have been cut to 103. The latest round of cutbacks occurred in late January when 18 positions were eliminated statewide.

When a CEO feels compelled to use the “b” word it is not a good sign for the corporation.The GBC is current on their financial obligations only after some serious budget catch-up work late last year.

Does anyone besides me sense that the halcyon days of building greater buildings is past? Has the landscape changed and we are finally catching up with the change? Perhaps so. 

My generation loves their buildings. I'm not so sure our children's generation feel the same way.

The current fair market value assessment of the GBC's property is about $25 million, close to what is owed on it. I don't know if the tax assessor is lowballing the value here. No one expects the GBC to sell and not have cash to find a new location. We will see how serious a proposal this is.

I commend Dr. White and the Executive Committee for exploring the sale of this building which, as a Georgia Baptist, I had a part in creating. I make no judgment about motives, no charge of arrogance on anyone's part.

We are doing God’s business. We can do it with or without a magnificent edifice and most of us would admit that sometimes it is helpful to be humbled.

________________

              Ozymandias

 I MET a Traveler from an antique land,
    Who said, "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
    Stand in the desart. Near them, on the sand,
    Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
    And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
    Tell that its sculptor well those passions read,
    Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
    The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed:
    And on the pedestal these words appear:
    "My name is OZYMANDIAS, King of Kings."
    Look on my works ye Mighty, and despair!
    No thing beside remains. Round the decay
    Of that Colossal Wreck, boundless and bare,
    The lone and level sands stretch far away.

Cooperative Program Confusion

Our wonderful CP, an eminently sensible concept, is shrinking and churches have dropped from over ten percent to the CP to around six. One complaint about the CP is that state conventions keep too much of each CP dollar.

SBC Executive Committee statistics show that the percentage of CP dollars kept by the states is around 63% and in the last 50 years has ranged between roughly 61% and 67%. There seems to me to be a growing criticism that more of each CP dollar fails to get out of the states. Bryant Wright has pointedly said that states ought to cut their share in half.

But when I look at my state's explanation of the use of CP dollars, I see this graphic:

The caption to this reads "Georgia Baptists share every mission dollar equally with the Southern Baptist Convention" and what is meant to be conveyed is that the GBC's share is "really" only 40% of each CP dollar.

Huh? If we share every dollar equally, and if 40% is the GBC take, how is it that the GBC forwards to Nashville only 40 cents on the dollar?

It has to do with an accounting, actually a presentation, wrinkle. Not all state conventions do it this way but the GBC has a budget category called, "Shared Causes." The middle 20 cents in the dollar graphic above represents this.

If you could read the fine print on that dollar "Shared Causes" include CP promotion, WMU, Church-Minister Relations, The Christian Index, and Financial Services. Actually, that 20% includes the expense of not a few staff members, a total of $8.7 million, including a catch-all category of $3 million, most of which is the communications department and debt service. I haven't asked but I'm guessing that far more than 20% of GBC employees are charged to this "Shared Causes" category.

The explanation is that the state convention, by promoting and collecting money from churches for the mission boards, seminaries, etc, the SBC stuff, should be "compensated" for expenses in doing this. So, the GBC says one-third of what is kept in state out of a CP dollar is actually "shared causes" with the SBC.

Sorry, this is not a realistic and reasonable way to explain the CP budget here in GA. State convention executives recently met and agreed to limit to 10%, half of what the GBC is doing, these "shared expenses." Good for them.

I'd say to my GBC colleagues, folks whom I respect (our CEO, Robert White, is tops among all the states in my opinion), let's drop this stuff. Tell it like it is. Stop with the byzantine accounting. Move to a genuine 50/50 split, not an artifical one.

The amount of each CP dollar kept in the states is lower now than in previous years and is in line with what it has been for scores of years. But I perceive that part of why the CP lacks the appeal to churches is that they see more value in having a greater proportion of their CP dollar make it to Richmond and Alpharetta, to Nashville, and all the seminaries.

I commend the state executives for recognizing something is amiss and correcting it.

Georgia Baptist Convention and significant budget reductions, staff cuts

The Christian Index reports that GBC cuts 2011 budget to 2000 levels. To get perspective on this, the high water mark for staffing at the GBC was in 2008 when there were 163 employees. After this latest budget trimming, there will be 103 employees.

It is reported also that a number of employees will likely take early retirement, since GuideStone is reducing annunity funding rates and the GBC is cutting retiree medical benefits. 'Woe is us' say GBC employees who are enduring a triple whammy of budget/staff cuts, benefit cuts, and annuity cuts.

Our GBC CEO, Robert White, says that staff reductions will not affect commitment to resourcing churches, leading one to wonder exactly what all these employees were doing, but never mind.

Bryant Wright, our SBC president, notably said that state conventions should learn to live with half of what they are getting. With no impetus from the Great Commission Resurgence Task Force, or from NAMB removing the money they send back to the GBC through the Cooperative Agreements, the GBC has seen staffing cut by 37%.

What Wright had in mind was that the states could live on half so that the other half could go to higher priority, authentic missions like NAMB and IMB. Looks like a good chunk of that half has just evaporated and isn't capable of going anywhere.

White rightly laments the fact that good, solid, employees must be let go. Such is Baptist life at the moment.

My question is this: Do we have a new normalcy for SBC life? One where at all levels of denominational life (associations, state conventions, and national entities) there is a permanent lowering of budgets and staff?

I suspect so for state conventions and some national entities; however, The Great Commission Resurgence will be a failure if field personnel at NAMB and the International Mission Board do not increase. Kevin Ezell and whomever the new IMB chief is will have to inspire churches to give to Annie and Lottie. I am doubtful there will be a great increase in funds sent from the states through the Cooperative Program.